I originally had two of the main characters hooking up early in the very first version of the story.

Then after notes from a friend I cut it down to just one scene. That scene was actually pretty violent and traumatic.

Then as I converted this story from a screenplay into a novel, my managers mentioned the YA market so I toned it down. It became the very model of a chaste romance like the first Twilight book. Of course YA doesn’t necessarily mean chaste.

But then as I got ready to put this on Kindle I decided to put back in one of the sex scenes. I kept the rough scene sexless because the emotions were already very raw, then I added another sex scene that I never considered.

In the end I wound up with a story that was decidedly hotter than the previous versions. But the sex had done something more just add a touch of spice. It actually became part of the theme.

The main reason I kept the traumatic scene from becoming a full on sexual assault was that I wanted the sex to be good in this story. I wanted it to be fulfilling and a breakthrough for the characters. That combined with the 19th Century setting helped deepen a theme I’d been working on.

The 19th Century was much more uptight about sex than we could possibly have dreamt of. Sure there were bawdy tavern songs and stuff like that but it’s a far cry from today’s very frank and open society. The main characters are already breaking several taboos. Sex is just another social norm that they choose to defy. Very importantly Eva’s attitude towards sex later in the story doesn’t change. She has some doubts about Viktor and what he’s doing but she doesn’t go back entirely and become a born again Puritan. She remains, maybe a little too idealistically, a liberated, ahead of her time, young woman. And her ability to be such a free thinker is very important later on. So in the end having the sex in there made Eva so much stronger than she had been in the earlier drafts.

I’m glad I stuck it back in there.

Pun.

Sorry, couldn’t resist.

Book Description:
In a small village in early 19th Century young Eva is enthralled by the new young baron, Viktor Frankenstein. Viktor promises to transform the traditional little town into a beacon of science and gives the book loving Eva access to his fantastic library. Eva becomes his student and assists him in a secret experiment, though she is kept in the dark about its ultimate aim. Soon after that Viktor introduces Eva to his “cousin” Adam. Adam is horribly disfigured with stitches running across his face. Viktor claims he is mute and simpleminded, but Eva takes pity on him and sets out to teach him to speak.…

What follows is a combination of tragic romance and classic horror as Eva is pulled between Viktor, who grows jealous and takes murderous steps to ensure his secret, and Adam, who possess tremendous strength and rage yet deep inside is innocent and vulnerable.

In his debut fantasy novel, Michael J. Lee retells the classic story by Mary Shelley as a dark romance with steampunk overtones.

Author Bio:
"Michael Lee is a script consultant, judge and entertainment blogger for The Wrap.com and has lived in Detroit, Connecticut, Ohio and Los Angeles."http://www.thewrap.com/blog/michael-lee